Home Page Notice – SCGC Players Forum Is Back

[Dermot]

Hello

I don’t own a Santa Cruz Guitar, they look amazing.

What’s the history of the forum, why did it go away ?

Thanks

Dermot

 

[indexless]

Welcome back!

[tadol]

I have no idea about the beginnings – I think when I first joined it was quite late in its history, and well established with a good number of members. But it had a period of leadership issues, primarily because it was all volunteer, and issues of greater importance outside of the forum left some of the administrative and technical issues under-attended, then, in a series of “perfect storm” kind of problems, there was a physical (hardware) breakdown that caused the forum to crash and burn. Much time and energy was spent trying to restore it, then to try and recover some of it, but eventually, it was realized that it was all wasted time and effort. The exact details are unknown to me, but as they say, water under the bridge –

But the loss was felt deeply, and after some agonizing, it was determined that the only course forward was to start from scratch. With a wee bit of financial support from the maestro, plus the pulling in of a great number of favors, a new forum was born – of which you have now joined.  It remains a largely volunteer effort, although behind the scenes, a bit more effort has been put into data security, and in front of the scenes, we have our chief cook and bottlewasher who goes by the handle “indexless”, another Richard, who does a tremendous job keeping the bots and spam attacks off the site, and also coordinates and is largely responsible for our podcast efforts. In many ways, he is both the heart and soul of the forum and the podcasts.

I largely interject off the cuff , and come up with fun projects for others to work on, and then enjoy their efforts! I also have a bad (per my wife) habit of searching out and acquiring Santa Cruz guitars – but as my closet space is largely filled, that pasttime has been greatly diminished.

Beyond that, we are slowly re-building our membership, and our content. A challenge with the many, many other online sites that are eagerly working to build membership, but we have something that no other site has to the same degree, and that is players who love Santa Cruz guitars. There is no requirement to own one, but when the desire gets deep enough, that tends to happen. ?  I hope that you’ll join us, and maybe I’ll have an idea you could help with!

 

[bert]

Welcome Dermot, good to have you on board.

I never knew of the old forum, thanks Tad for the background.  I have played SCGC guitars for many years but the orig forum completely escaped my radar unfortunately.   However… I was an active member of the orig Colling forum that went tits up a while back,  pook happens.

Big +1 on Indexless and Tad for getting this forum rolling again.  We’ll have you connecting with a fine SCGC guitar in no time.  🙂  best wishes, bert

[Daniel]

How much time do you have?  🙂

I joined the forum while a guy neamed Doug Jones (AKA Little Brother) was running it.  He built it using a free database software package that he tweaked rather heavily in order to make it look like a custom job.

I think he as hoping to eventually get paid by SCGC for the effort, but it never materialised.  At some point after 2004 and before 2010 he asked for a voulnteer to moderate, so I did.  We had a couple of conversations, and he took me on.

Then about a year later (please forgive my lack of precise dating, I didn’t take notes at the time) he dropped the whole thing in my lap.  I did my best to learn the software he used, but his modifications made updating the damn thing nightmarish, and at some point he stopped answering my questions.

So it limped on for a few more years.  Then I got married, moved to the UK, and had a baby.

It was at this point (I may have even been working full time by then) that the thing went down, and nothing I could do would bring it back. Every forray into the back end of the thing seemed more confusing than the last, and it only got worse.

Lacking both the time and the deep expertise required to save the forum database, I had to throw in the towel.

In short, I was a good moderator and a lousy sys admin.

I am happy that you guys have found the juice to retart things and carry on.  And I stick around a) because I like SGCG guitars, b) because you’re all lovely people, and c) because I feel the need to atone for my failures.  😉

Daniel

[indexless]

Thanks Daniel……you were the first. I was a member When Doug started it, I’ve really lost track of him. Thanks again, a great recap

[Dermot]

Hello All

Thanks for the replies.

I was reading a couple of forum topics and that’s what prompted my question.

Building a website / forum can’t be easy considering life / technology never stands still

for a moment.

Thanks

Dermot

 

 

[bert]

So often, people try to simplify things that are not simple. I was working in early computing when MOSFET (first transistor on a chip) came into existence, changed the world forever. Push button computer applications don’t come from a magic wand.

Hat’s off to indexless and others who do the down and dirty to keep us afloat.  bert

[Old 97]

I was there in the beginning.

I am here now.

[bert]

Daniel,
thanks for your explain of the early forum days… you were not a failure.

In the mid-70s I moved to Santa Cruz for a job with a good sized company plus a move toward an opportunity in Silicon Valley. The previous computer guy was a novice who knew almost nothing about software design, much as it was in those days. I tried to patch his work but in frustration ended up rewriting all of the applications to go forward. I wound up going to work for HP which was my plan from the beginning but…. you were not a failure. I understand your catch22 situation completely.

We got your back around here. bert

[Daniel]

Thanks Bert.  🙂

Daniel

[Dermot]

Daniel

So, it was the baby’s fault ?

Dermot

 

 

 

 

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